5 Tips on How to Write Lyrics

So, you have your basic melody down for the song you are working and now you want to write some top class lyrics which will blow away your listeners. The only problem, nothing is coming on your mind.

In my Musical Experience anyone can write Lyrics. What stops us is criticism from other people and our inability to start that creative flow to express ourselves.

I wrote all the lyrics for my previous band's Debut EP "The King in Exile" and here are 5 Tips i used, to come up with all the lines i wrote.

Writing Random Lines might sound crazy but it works. When you write down Random lines or Words your mind starts getting focused on writing and making sentences. .

When i was writing "Drowning in My Sins "

I put some thought about the Music. The Music was Haunting, Sad and gave the feeling of Isolation. Like a person standing on an Ocean Shore and contemplating. I wrote down 2 random words which came to me.

Rising Tides

Vacant Signs

Its funny but i was able to derive 4 lines just from the word "Rising Tides".

What do rising tides do? They fall. And another word for Rise is to elevate , So i got 2 more lines for the song and added the word Fated, to create a different topic to write about.

Rising Tides they,

Fall so Slowly

My life is so,

Fated, Elevated

The second word i wrote down was "Vacant Signs". So i started thinking about what the words Vacant Signs define.

Vacant meaning empty and Signs can be like a Sign Board or Signs on a wall. So basically Vacant Signs are like Empty Signs on a wall.

Now the music for Drowning in My Sins was haunting so i thought to myself how can i write some haunting lines so i came up with,

Vacant Signs they,

Emerge so slowly

Walls are all so stained

Basically, there are empty signs appearing on the wall like a ghost. So it made sense that now its a fictional fantasy story where there are ghosts. So with Ghosts comes monsters.

Basic Instinct

Rises in Me

Over the Hill I am Drowning

These lines i left to more open interpretation. Rise of Basic Instinct refers to the primal nature of killing or it can also be taken as the person turned into a Were Wolf.

Over the hill i am Drowning was a random Lines i put there but it somehow worked and Suddenly i had the theme to the Song.

A guilt ridden person who is Drowning in his Sins and based on this theme i wrote the rest of the lines.

A real good tip while making songs is to make a Strong Chorus. Chorus will be your Strongest or Most cool part which is catchy. So it is often an interesting idea to write the Chorus First.

I did this For 2 of the Tracks in the EP - "The Dark Crusader" and "The Casket of Sorrows"

Lines from The Dark Crusader

Heavens Fall,

The Earth Bleeds Dry

And hell reigns over ground and Sky

Ashes falling

Like Winter Snow

Your choice your madness

Controls your soul

The Lyrics and theme of the song was constructed after i wrote these lines. So I asked myself the lines define that its the End of Earth. Who is Mad enough to Choose to stay out at time like this to Protect it ? Answer was Simple "BATMAN".

So this song ended up being a tribute to Batman and draws inspiration from his fictional Story.

When you write a lot of Words then you need a heavy Arsenal of words. So Dictionary comes into play. There are several ways to use the Dictionary. Use it to check if you are using the right words or go crazy and go on a hunt for new words to add to your song.

A lot of times you will know what you want to write but the words are not fitting in the verse or they do not sound interesting in a musical context, then Thesaurus comes into play. Check for Synonyms of the word you can change using Thesaurus and put down a clever sounding word.

Writing lyrics is hard work and the worst thing to run into is low inspiration. Take time to read a Book to get some inspiration from another piece of Literature. Now the aim here is to inspire ourselves to get a theme and some concept to write. Plagiarizing is bad.

The same can be done by reading Quotes but this would require you to know a particular theme which you want to write about.

Well, Once my Clients had a song which they had no lyrics to. They just knew what they wanted the song title to be. So what we did was, we looked up quotes related to the title and we wrote the whole song by combining sentences from different quotes and using some of our own sentences.

I consider that a bad case of Plagiarizing but what the hell it was not my song.

When you run out of ideas in your own language try looking for an option in a different one. Languages from other countries may sound better in the Musical context you are working on.

Use it in your Chorus or in your verse.

A Tout Le Monde by Megadeth is a really good example of how a different language used in the Chorus can make a song sound good.

As a Few parting words I would like to say is that Lyric writing is a Literary Art. It requires constant hard work to improve. Consider Lyric writing as a way to express yourself. With Art there is always criticism. Our biggest mistake is that we start defending ourselves against Critics but we need to learn to Accept it as things to improve on.